


And They All Fall Down

by atsammy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied Destial if you want to read it that way, Mary Winchester Feels, POV Mary Winchester, Post-12Ep1, Post-12Ep2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8405293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atsammy/pseuds/atsammy
Summary: It's been a week since she found herself facing a grown man claiming to be her eldest son.  A week, and she doesn't know if she can bear the feeling of failure.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written between _Keep Calm & Carry On_ and _Mamma Mia_ , so it doesn't quite match the canon ending of _Mamma Mia_ even though it is set after the events of that episode.

Much later, after Sam's feet had been bandaged and dressings on his (oh God) bullet wound had been changed, once he'd been given morphine (how the hell did they have morphine), once Dean had left his side and gone to bed... once everything was quiet, Mary left the room of her youngest child. Her youngest child who had yet to regain consciousness, who had no idea she was _there_... She wandered the darkened hallways, not taking in the lack of truly personal things in the bunker. Sure, there were the spines of books, and that small tray of a computer on the table, and decades of furniture... but it wasn't a home. 

It wasn't what she'd imagined for her boys. It wasn't what she'd wanted for them at all. Oh, God.

She found herself just outside the darkened kitchen. She nearly passed it by, but an abrupt memory of evenings at home with her mother, seated around the table with tea hit her. It had only been seven nights, as she remembered them, since she'd last sat down with tea to end the day. It had been her own little ritual, after putting the boys to bed, while John was watching a game. 

She went in and put water on to boil. She was absurdly happy that the stove, at least, operated like she remembered. The microwave was completely different, and the television Dean had shown her, but at least she could still make tea. 

Not that the tea was very good. It tasted like it had been in the cabinet as long as she'd been... dead. The thought went through her mind, and she laughed once, before pushing the mug away from her and put her head in her hands. 

She wasn't crying. She most assuredly was not crying, when the chair opposite hers scraped lightly across the floor. Her head jerked up, and she was half out of her chair before she recognized Castiel in front of her. He was still wearing the trench coat she had yet to see him without. 

He sat perfectly erect, he hands folded on the table in front of him. And he was staring directly at her, without blinking.

"Where..." She sat back down and grabbed for her mug of tea to have something to hold on to. "Where did you come from?" 

"I was walking the perimeter. Dean asked me to reinforce the wards as much as I can."

"Right," she said, after a long moment. 

She sat there, watching him, as he watched her back, his face impassive. She couldn't tell if he was even breathing.

"Who are you, Castiel?"

He quirked his head, his eyes tightening slightly. "Dean introduced me. My name is Castiel."

"And... you are an..."

"I am an Angel of the Lord."

None of the tells were there, none of the signs her father had taught her about recognizing a lie, no glint of satisfaction like the demon who'd killed her. "Right."

The silence did not last very long this time.

"I was dead." 

"Yes."

"I was in..."

"You were in Heaven, yes. Your deal with Azazel did not resign you to Hell when you died."

"Why don't I remember any of it? Why don't I remember... Heaven?"

Castiel didn't respond right away, but she didn't think it was because he was preparing to lie. 

"I don't know."

"You don't know. You are an angel; how can you not know?"

For the first time, he looked uncomfortable, and she tensed. "I am no longer a member of the Host. I was not welcomed back after... our Father and Amara left. What Dean has told you is as much as I know about why you were returned."

"You were kicked out of Heaven?" The idea gave her pause, and then alarm. She let go of the cooling mug with one hand and put it in her lap, inches from the knife Dean had asked her to strap to her belt. 

Castiel nodded opposite her but said nothing. His eyes remained on her, though she was certain he knew what she might do next.

"Are you a... demon, then? He was..."

The first true sign of emotion she had seen since she first held a gun on him hardened his expression, and he pressed his hands palm down on the table. "I am nothing like Lucifer."  


A part of her wanted to push further, but something in his gaze and the whiteness in his knuckles gave her pause. That might be something better put to Dean. With exaggerated nonchalance, she raised her hand back onto the table, and with the other brought the mug of tea to her lips. Taking a sip, she grimaced and put it back down with a sigh. It was cold. 

As she stared at it, a larger hand reached across the table and very briefly hovered above the mug. As Castiel sat back once more, steam rose from the mug, which had been refilled, bringing with it the scent of cardamom and cloves and strong tea. 

"Thank you," she whispered, as she paused before trying the new drink to savor the smell. It was wonderful.

"The first time I visited Earth, I had this in a cave with a hermit who could neither hear nor speak. I have no need to eat, despite Dean's efforts, but I enjoy this."

She smiled. She couldn't help it. "He does love to eat. At least, he always did."

"Pie is his idea of heaven." 

That brought a laugh, though a sober one. She'd seen his devotion to his brother, to Sammy. And his disbelieving but already apparent devotion to her. "Part of it, anyway."

This time the pause was Castiel's, before he dipped his head in a nod. "Yes."

For the first times since he had joined her, she relaxed back into her chair. Fortifying herself with more tea, she set the mug aside and looked him in the eyes. "What are you doing with my boys, Castiel?"

"Protecting them, as best as I can."

"But why? Why would an angel come down from heaven, for my boys? Why now?"

Castiel was quiet for a very long time. He looked... uncertain of what to say, though Mary could have sworn that his expression never changed. Eventually, his eyes flicked up just as a quiet voice came from behind her, and she jumped.

"Go ahead, Cas."

There was Dean, eyes red-rimmed and tired, in a worn-out t-shirt and baggy pants. His feet were bare on the tile floor, and she bit back the urge to tell him to put slippers on. He crossed to the sink and filled a glass of water. 

"Are you certain, Dean?"

Dean leaned against the counter as he drained that first glass, then refilled it. 

"Yeah. I don't..."

The exhaustion in her son's voice, a voice still unfamiliar but one that she _knew_ in her soul, clutched at her heart. She rose from her seat and went to him, she couldn't help it. He felt right when she hugged him... five feet taller, sure, but he'd always clung to her in a certain way, just like this, one hand tightening on her shoulder like she'd disappear if he let go. There was a wet sheen to his eyes when she pulled back. 

"You can tell her, Cas. If she... You," he corrected, "have questions after that, ask. But..." He ran his free hand through his short hair, clearly uncomfortable, like he expected punishment. "I can't... I can't be the one to tell you that."

There was a look in his eyes, one that she had _promised_ herself she would never see in her children's faces. One that spoke of a life of fear, and pain, and more loss than her precious should have ever known. She raised up on her toes and kissed his forehead, this man older now than she had ever been. She kissed him, and then let him go. "Go put some socks on," she said in reply. 

He walked away, and she watched him leave. He went straight to the door, and she wasn't the only one to watch. Castiel, who had finally moved in his seat, had turned his head as Dean had passed him.

"Night, Cas," she thought she heard, but it was so quiet it may have just been a breath. 

A few minutes later, they could hear a door shut somewhere in the bunker, and Castiel looked back at her. 

"Would you like more tea?"

She was about to decline, but then... Something about the look in Dean's eyes changed her mind. 

"Thank you." 

By the time she was seated, her mug had been refilled and there was gentle steam rising once more.

"Tell me what happened to my boys."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He spoke, and when she finally stopped him an hour later, it was because the sobs she was unable to hold back, would not end. The tears began almost immediately, when he had described the deal Dean had made to bring Sam _back from the dead_ , and continued even as he described rescuing Dean from _Hell_. She was certain she was not being told everything; the part of her mind that had been trained as a hunter knew that there were things missing from his descriptions of stopping the apocalypse, and the final battle between two archangels. Knew, somehow, that there was so much more to come to reach the moment only a week ago when she'd found herself standing inexplicably in front of a grown man claiming to be her oldest child.

Her empty mug had long been set aside, and she had her palms pressed to her eyes. "Stop... please, just stop." Those were her first words in all that time, and the effect was instantaneous. The kitchen went silent, the only sounds the faint ticking of the grandfather clock somewhere beyond the room.

"I'm sorry."

"Why?" she whispered. "Why are you sorry?"

"I have not protected Dean... I have not protected them as best as I could. They were my responsibility, and I..."

"No," she all but yelled, rising from her chair. "They were mine, my responsibility." That was the basis for all the pain, all the confusion she had forced away in the last seven days. She turned away, unable to face the man... the angel still seated at the table. "This was not the life I wanted for them. I left this life behind for a _reason_."

"Fate is a bitch," came his annoyingly serious reply, and the laugh that it produced surprised her. She wiped at her eyes and stared unseeing at the stovetop in front of her.

"Don't tell me..."

"We've met."

"Of course you have." 

"The rules of Fate, and all the expectations of Heaven, no longer apply. The End of Days that had been foretold has passed by, because of your sons. All that has come after has come from the free will my Father gave to all humanity, which my brothers and sisters have attempted to emulate. But we no longer know what is to come, only that our Father has completely left us behind. And so, we make our own way, for good or for ill. As Sam and Dean have done. This may not be the life you wanted for them, but each of them, in the end, has chosen it over any other. Is that not what parents truly want, for their children to choose their own path?"

She shook her head and glanced back at him. "Not like this. Not to sacrifice their happiness, their lives. Not like this."

He had no response to that, and she left the kitchen. She couldn't bear to be in the same room with him any longer. His logic was cold, and nothing of the last hour, even his references to how he'd saved her sons' lives eased her confusion over what he was doing here, now. What was his purpose, if he couldn't even explain why _she_ was there? 

As she walked down the darkened hallway once more, she paused first at Sam's door, and then at Dean's, listening as she always had for sounds of distress. She could not make herself open the doors, though she rested her hand on them. She wanted to hold onto the images of her boys, small, helpless, sleeping peacefully in crib and child's bed as they once had. 

She stopped in the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth and her hair. Looking at herself in the mirror, she felt as though she'd aged the thirty-three years in an hour, and it was odd to see her features as she knew them. Her eyes were red, and the shadows beneath them... 

This wasn't supposed to be her life, anymore. She was supposed to have children, so many children, and grandchildren. They were supposed to be happy, not sacrificing themselves to demons and killing things. They weren't supposed to know about any of this. 

She'd failed them.

The faint sound of footsteps in the hall eventually intruded on her thoughts, and she washed her face one more time to hide her fresh tears. Turning off the light, she opened the door and saw the faint flap of a long coat as the door to Dean's room fifteen feet away quietly shut. 

She stared at the door for a long moment, but no lights came on, and she turned away. Her boys were alive. That was enough, for now.


End file.
